Most people just looked at me oddly when I asked them if they wanted to come to an afternoon tea party and listen to a human rights defender and Nobel Peace Prize nominee talking about her work empowering women in Pakistan. I guess at first sight, the two don\u2019t obviously seem to go together\u2026<\/p>\n
But go together they did, as Oxfam South West and the UK Friends of Khwendo Kor (FROK)<\/a> organised a tea party on Saturday in honour of Maryam Bibi<\/a>, the founder of Khwendo Kor (\u2018Sisters\u2019 Home\u2019 in Pashto), a woman\u2019s charity in the tribal areas of Pakistan supported by Oxfam GB and Oxfam Novib. The agency aims to empower women through education, access to better healthcare and by helping them set up small businesses. This work is challenging and can be dangerous, plagued with kidnappings and violence enacted by groups of extremists who oppose women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n Maryam\u2019s talk was moving and inspirational, really captivating her audience, many of whom were not familiar with the issues. Working across rural areas of Waziristan, Khwendo Kor\u2019s work with women benefits not only them but the whole family; children have improved health and education levels and the family\u2019s income is increased. Maryam spoke of the difficulty of working to increase women\u2019s role in the family as it goes against cultural tradition in many villages \u2013 she is often pitted against very resistant husbands. However, once the benefits percolate down to the whole family the husbands can sometimes be convinced it\u2019s a good thing!<\/p>\n Globally over 72 million children still don\u2019t attend school and every day 1,400 women die needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth. Today it has been announced that aid targets set five years ago at Gleneagles won\u2019t be met<\/a>, which is, quite frankly, scandalous. The missing money could ensure that every child in the world could get an education. Every child, not just the lucky few. Now, more than ever, it is crucial that we take Maryam Bibi\u2019s lead and take a stand on health and education for all by making sure our leaders keep the promises they made five years ago.<\/p>\n Which is where you come in. Whether it\u2019s a fun promise to cook your friends a slap-up meal or a more serious pledge to cut your carbon emissions or lobby your local MP about health and education for all, log on to Oxfam\u2019s Big Promise<\/a> and show world leaders how it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n Maryam has shown what one woman can do. Imagine what we can achieve if we put our minds (and our promises!) to it\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most people just looked at me oddly when I asked them if they wanted to come to an afternoon tea party and listen to a human rights defender and Nobel Peace Prize nominee talking about her work empowering women in Pakistan. I guess at first sight, the two don\u2019t obviously seem to go together\u2026 But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5816,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-335329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5816"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}